This decision came in response to the city’s current water capacity and its ability to support the number of residential water accounts to come.
“If we do keep adding residential, at historic rates, let’s say two years from now—maybe even a year from now—if we had to entertain the same type of repair scenario, where we were only relying on Sandy Creek ... I don’t believe we would be able to manage through it,” City Manager Rick Beverlin said at the meeting, citing the recent repair of a Brushy Creek Regional Utility Authority pipe that took that treatment plant offline.
The recommendation, which is effective until the BCRUA’s Phase 1D, 2 and 2A water expansions are completed, limits zoning requests that seek to add residential zoning or increase the density of residential land uses; prioritizes low-density residential use components—single-family rural, single-family estate and single-family suburban; and encourages conservation efforts that will reduce short- and long-term water system demands.
“I don’t think that these are unreasonable,” Council Member Kathryn Pantalion-Parker said at the meeting. “We have to catch up, or we are going to remain a bedroom community.”
Currently, 58% of Leander’s land use is residential; 14.5% is nonresidential, or commercial, retail, office and industrial; 5.5% is other, including churches, city-owned properties, parks and utilities; and 22% is interim, which means it is annexed, but final zoning has not been requested.
The city’s residential development growth is 5-7 years ahead of commercial, water and road infrastructure development growth, Beverlin said.
Leander’s total water capacity is 25.6 million gallons per day, or mgd. Peak water demand this summer reached 20.8 mgd.
Phase 1D, the first of the expansions, would increase Leander’s available water capacity to 32 mgd. This phase is not expected to reach completion until early 2025, given everything goes as planned with construction, which is not guaranteed, according to officials.
Based on the city’s scenario of a roughly 7,000 population increase per year, by summer 2025, Leander’s roughly 82,000 population would increase to 103,084—putting demand for water at 25.1 mgd.
If Leander’s population grows by 10% per year, putting it at 109,424 by summer 2025, demand would reach 26.7 mgd.
Under these growth scenarios, city staff expressed concern about the need for a moratorium if residential growth is not slowed.
“If we hit a moratorium, it becomes a self-fulfilling [prophecy]—we’re going to hit the conservation piece and continue to hit it, but we’re also going to tell [the community] where we see pinch points and issues,” Beverlin said.
By 2028—contingent on the completion of all the BCRUA’s water expansions—the city’s total water capacity will be 44 mgd.
Beverlin said the city’s goal is to avoid a moratorium, and that the development restrictions will not last forever.
“We’re not looking at a permanent recommendation on this; however, the next several years are going to be critical,” he said.
